"Rating A.S. Johnston" Topic

Having been reading "Jefferson Davis and His Generals" by Woodworth, I'm mulling over his (tightly argued) case in defence of Albert Sidney Johnston. I think one especially compelling facet is the four-month bluff that led to Sherman being put on leave and to the preservation of Confederate Kentucky and West and Middle Tennessee.

What do others think of him? Was his death a significant loss to the Confederacy, or did Davis (and others) overrate him?

Think they overrated him.

Not enough data. Early war everyone was a mixed bag of promise and inexperience.

I think the difference with Johnston is that he was one of the few senior officers with significant pre-war command experience – Scott, Wool, and Harney stayed with the Union, though only Wool can be said to have played a significant role; Twiggs went with the Confederacy and his only significant play was his opening surrender. Brevet Brigadier Johnston was the pre-war general officer who saw most action, and as part of that oversaw the preservation of Kentucky and Tennessee through to 1862, but also the losses at Mill Springs and at Henry/Donelson.

So I would argue there's enough data to make *some* judgement – perhaps we'd have had enough if he had survived Shiloh, with that loss or victory to his record.

With all the unknowns, I would rate him as an average army commander, however that works out in the rules system you are using.

Even if AS Johnston had survived Shiloh, assuming the battle played out as it did historically, I think his reputation would have come through OK. After all, he counterattacked when possible, routed the enemy on the first day, and was only defeated by overwhelming numbers the second day. I don't think he would have been viewed any worse than Joseph E Johnston, and certainly better than a Bragg.

On the positive side he had Jeff Davis' confidence and friendship.

On the negative side he had among others Beauregard and Polk as subordinates.

His cordon defense idea to hold Fort Henry and Fort Donelson was a major strategic blunder.

Instead of consolidated his forces in the face of a Union advance he tried to hold these positions which were poorly situated to defend against a Union advance. The capture of over 17,000 men which could have been withdrawn and used at Shiloh alone was a major reason for the defeat in that battle.

His performance at Shiloh was also a blunder, positioning his 3 corps one in front of another instead of each to the left, center and right of the battleline. Command control broke down quickly.

His attempt to go to the front to lead the attack personally (getting himself shot) while leaving Beauregard to direct the battle was pure incompetence for any army commander.

Unfortunately for the CSA, none of his replacements were much better in the Western theater.

Kim

I'm not entirely convinced the cordon defence was the wrong "strategy", if only because military strategy has to be understood against the background of the political aims wars set out to achieve. The cordon defence was the only one that could preserve Confederate Kentucky and north/west Tennessee; it was explicitly a bluff to allow more forces to gather in the West, given Johnston's army was so badly outnumbered.

I'd also argue the Henry/Donelson points – Donelson was incompetence/cowardice on Pillow and Floyd's parts.

I'd agree about Shiloh. Adopting Beauregard's plan was very unhelpful on the day – sticking to his own instincts would have been better.

I agree with KimRYoung. While it's true that he had inadequate forces to deal with such a large territory, he made the following major errors:

1. Placed himself with Hardee, his one competent subordinate, while leaving Polk and others to their own devices (and errors).

2. Once Polk invaded KY he should have put more energy into replacing Ft. Henry with a better site, such as Ft. Heiman which was started but never completed.

3. Reinforced disaster by sending just enough troops to Donelson to increase the bag of POWs. Should have either taken his whole force from Bowling Green or none.

4. At Shiloh he spread each "corps" across his front in successive waves, in a very wooded terrain, making it impossible for each "corps" commander to see/control all of his units.

5. Also at Shiloh: Tried to micro-manage one sector, losing track of all others.

6. Neglected his own wound, so that he bled to death.

I know there were some admirers of AS Johnston out there. With the perspective of history I would say that being a favorite of Jeff Davis was rarely an indicator of competence (see Bragg).

But I will also say that the first 18 months of the War was not an indicator of later performance. Note that in April of 1862 McClellan was a genius and Lee was "Granny".

This is a long way of saying it is hard to develop a valid opinion about a guy who didn't seem to live up to his expectations but died too soon to have learned anything.

Yeah, so early in the war, I don't see much difference between AS Johnston choosing the wrong formation at Shiloh, JE Johnston being unable to get everybody into battle at Seven Pines, and RE Lee being able to get everyone to attack at Malvern Hill. AS Johnston just didn't live long enough to ride out the learning curve.

I am not a fan, and I don't believe his death made much of a difference in the course of the war. However I think it is easy to come down too hard on him. Johnston was faced with an almost impossible task. He was forced to defend to long a front in an area that provided too many invasion routes for the U.S. forces, and he had too few troops to defend the line.

Connelly's "Army of the Heartland" convinced me that AS Johnston was in over his head. True, he sent Sherman home. But he didn't accomplish much else until the attack at Shiloh. He buried himself in staff work that should have been done by subordinates and missed the big picture. The result was Mill Springs, Henry and Donelson.

The cordon defense was Davis' idea but Albert Sidney didn't argue against it. He didn't execute it well. A cordon without a reserve is useless. Given time he might have matured into the role, but he wasn't showing much flash up to Shiloh. His performance there was of a division or brigade commander. Being a martyr put a gloss on his reputation.

A little off topic, but please permit me to mention one thing. I found out recently that A. S. Johnston is buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas, not far from where my wife and I live. I'd like to visit his grave sometime this year, in spite of his qualities as a general.

Please pardon this brief interruption to this discussion. But I know there are some other TMP embers from central Texas who might be interested to know this.

FYI Johnston's portrait is also one of the few portraits hanging in the Texas Senate chamber, it's beside LBJ and Barbara Jordan.

If Johnston had lived and learned from his early war mistakes, Bragg may never have risen to the command of the Army of Tennessee. Now there's an interesting thought.

I'll echo John the Greater and Cleburne1863's comments – I think it's easy to judge harshly (or, indeed, overgenerously – but I see more harshness than overgenerosity).

Surely the fairest criticism is that unlike others, he *did* have relatively serious pre-war command experience (on the southern side, only Davis was comparable). That makes his micromanagement more open to criticism – and it makes him not trusting his own instincts about deployment at Shiloh all the more puzzling.

re Donelson and Henry – well, it was his initiative to start Heiman as I understand it. It may be a fair point about Donelson – though that would have meant stripping the cordon in a way that would, perhaps, have even further exposed his numerical weakness. More to the point, Donelson itself was simply *not* Johnston's loss. Between Floyd and Pillow being incompetents and Buckner being argumentative, disaster beckoned. Perhaps the mistake Johnston made there was not respecting protocol and just appointing someone competent.

As far as Polk goes, if you see Johnston's interactions with Polk, you can see that Polk was politically protected so as to get away with murder – I don't know that an order to swap with Hardee would have worked at all.

(and yes, his survival would have probably prevented Bragg from rising to the top – and perhaps also affected Van Dorn's career – though I'm probably an outlier in not judging Bragg as harshly as many)

Yes, I would rate him as average…as if that were a bad thing. I think gaming the ACW is about learning the limits of command and control of green units (and commanders). If you want your troops to obey at an instant and fight to the last man then pick another era to game. It doesn't matter how good a carpenter you are. If I give you a screw driver to saw boards with you are going to get an average result at best. Look at what Lee's lieutenants allowed him to do. They saved his bacon a few times to boot. He also had what was becoming a veteran army to work with and after saving Richmond (though McClelland did a lot of the work for him) the political clout to get what he needed. So don't judge A.S. Johnson too harshly when comparing him and his accomplishments to other generals in the ACW. Remember what he had to work with and then see if you could do better on a war game/board game table. Then rate yourself.

Johnston suffers by his association with Davis and Davis' hero worship of his friend. Johnston laboured under unfair and competing expectations at a time when he was still learning to command so many men over so large a department?

At Shiloh he seemed to be consumed with a 'do or die' attitude, he would redeem his reputation or die in the attempt! Who, in Johnston's position, with your battle plan and army unravelling before your very eyes could have sat back and not got involved as he did?

Some further thoughts on Shiloh – Beauregard's deployment happened by default, not really by Johnston's intention (re people thinking he micromanaged too much – perhaps he should have more!). Johnston, however, held a disintegrating army together, making key deployments through the day, and gave Grant the nearest thing to a crushing defeat he *ever* received. He attacked (the right move) when his subordinates wanted to withdraw.

I don't think his performance re Donelson was flawless (though the defeat wasn't his by any means), nor was his management of the Shiloh deployment – but his recovery from Donelson was very impressive, and he nearly won a chaotic battle by sheer force of will.

I don't know if he was a great army commander – or rather, he wasn't, but I don't know if he could have become one – but he was certainly a titanic figure, a Hero in the more technical sense.

(and one has to marvel at how the Confederacy's worst generals were assigned to key sectors under Johnston by Davis – Polk, Floyd/Pillow, Crittenden [perhaps a little harsh to consider Zollicoffer a true incompetent])